Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1885-1890, 1887-01-22
THE PIONEER
Why Bill Nye Adopted Literature In
stead of the Drama.

Those We're troublesome times, indeed,
when we were trying to settle up the new
world and a few other matters at the same
time.
Little do the soft eyed sons of prosperity
understand today, as they walk the paved
streets of the west under the cold glitter of
the electric light, surrounded by all that
can go to make life sweet and desirable,
that not many years ago on that same
ground their fathers fought the untutored
savage by night and chased the bounding
buffalo by day.
All, all is changed. Timei in his restless
and resistless fight has filed away those ear
" years in the county clerks office, and
these times are not the old times. With
the march of civilization | notice that it is
safer for a man to attend a theatre than in
the early days Of the wild and woody west.
Time has made it easier for n to go to
the opera and bring his daylights home
with him than it used to be.
1t seems but a few short years since my
roommate came home one night with a long
red furrow plowed along the top Of his
head, where some gentleman at the theatre
had shot him by mistake. My roommate
said that a tall man had objected to the
pianist, and suggested that he was playing
pianissiomo when he should have played
fortissimo, and trouble grew out of this,
which had ended in the death of the
pianist and the injury of several disinter-
ested spectators.
And yet the excitement of knowing that
you might be killed at any moment made
the theatre more attractive, and instead of
soaring men away it rather induced patron
age. Of course it prevented the attendance
of ladies who were at all timid, but it did
not cause any falling off in the receipts.
Some thought it aided a good deal, espec-
tally where the show itself didn't have
much blood in it.
The Bella Uuion was a pretty fair sam
pie of the theatre in those days. 1t was a
low, wooden structure, with a perpetual
band Oh the outside, that played gay and
festive circus tunes early and often. In
side you could poison your soul at the bar
and see the show at one and the same price
of admission. In an adjoining room silent
men joined the hosts of faro and the timid
tenderfoot gamboled DER the green.
T rSrS+pI %hs. ,a1,on IF o1a
evening in the capacity of a reporter for
the paper. I would not admit this, even
at this late day, only that it has been over
looked in Mr.. Talmage since; and if he
could go through such an ordeal in the in
terests of humanity, [ might be forgiven
for going there professionally to write up
the show for our amusement column.
The programme was quite varied. Negro
minstrelsy, sleight of hand, opera boufe,
high tragedy and that oriental style OF
quadrille called the khan khan, if my slug
gish memory be not at fault, formed the
principal attractions of the evening.
At about 1890 o. II o'clock the khan
khan was produced upon the stage. In
the midst Of it a tall man rose up at the
back Of the hall and came firmly down the
aisle with a large, earnest revolver in his
right hand. He was a powerfully built
man, with a dyed mustache and wicked
eye ON each side of his thin, red nose. He
threw up the revolver with a little click
that sounded very loud to me, for he had
stopped right behind me and rested his
left hand on my shoulder as he gazed over
on the stage. I could distinctly hear his
breath come and go, for it was a very loud
breath, with the odor of onions and emf
grant whisky upon it.
The orchestra paused in the middle of a
snort, and the man whose duty it was to
swallow the clsrionet pulled seven or eight
inches Of the instrument out of his face
and looked wildly around. The gentleman
who had been agitating the feelings of the
bass viol laid it down on the side, craWlsd
in behind it and spread a sheet of music
over his head.
The stage manager came forward to the
footlights and inquired what was wanted.
The tall man with self-cocking credentials
answered simply:
"By dashety blank to blank blank and
back again., | want my wife!"
The manager stepped back into the
wings for a moment, and when he came
forward he also had a large musical in
strument such as Mr.. Remington used to
make before he went into the type writing
business. / can still remember how large